Looking at the World from Tusványos

This week I partook in the mysterious Tusványos Festival. The festival, held annually since 1990, is part politico-intellectual conference – it has academic-style panel discussions on societal topics –, part rock concert, and part nature and spa retreat. Its mystery? That it makes that unlikely combination work. That it gets Hungarian villagers, students, and members of Budapest’s elites to have fun together on a field in an ethnically Hungarian part of Romania. The festival is part of Budapest’s campaign to reach out to Hungarian minority communities abroad, which would otherwise be isolated and scattered out.